Toby Stephens: Being born into the theatre was a mixed blessing - Telegraph Toby Stephens: Being born into the theatre was a mixed blessing Actor Toby Stephens tells Tim Walker why having famous parents isn't always easy. Toby Stephens, above, is preparing for a role in Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' at the Donmar Warehouse Photo: MARTIN POPE By Tim Walker 7:00AM BST 21 May 2009 It amuses Toby Stephens to see himself occasionally mooted as a successor to Daniel Craig as James Bond. "God knows, I could use the money, but it won't happen," the 40-year-old actor says. "They had enough problems with a blond Bond. The idea of someone with reddish hair getting the part would cause insurrection." The son of Dame Maggie Smith and the late Sir Robert Stephens has a nice line in self-deprecation. He has, however, notched up some fine performances over the years: Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre for the BBC, the title role in an RSC production of Coriolanus, and, more recently, King John in Robin Hood.

His one brush with Bond – as the baddy in Die Another Day with Pierce Brosnan – was, he says now, something of an aberration. "I have no idea how I got the part. I remember meeting Lee Tamahori, the director, and asking him about my character, as they had only sent me three pages of script. He said, 'Well, in a nutshell, you are playing a Korean who has been genetically modified into being a westerner', and I must say he lost me somewhere in that sentence. I had a lot of fun making that film, but honestly it wasn't where I came from or what I was a part of, and I subsequently just got on with what I had been doing before." Stephens is about to open in a production of Ibsen's A Doll's House at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, and it is clearly his stage work – along with his family – that mean the most to him. Anna-Louise, his New Zealand-born actress wife of the past eight years, has just presented him with an 8lb 4oz baby girl whom they have called Tallulah. They already have a boy named Eli, who was born in 2007.

Toby says Dame Maggie took a sharp intake of breath at the name of her granddaughter. "She thought of Tallulah Bankhead, a Hollywood actress of some repute. 'I love the name, of course, but you must understand she was a very naughty woman,' she told me. 'She was addicted to cocaine and had, among other things, a huge lesbian following.' " Related Articles Maggie Smith's actor son Toby Stephens pleads for 'class-blind’ casting 03 Oct 2012 One can imagine his mother delivering the lines with her customary relish, but then she is – as Sir Robert once was – a larger-than-life character. There was a time when Toby resented all the questions about his parents, who starred together in the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. But now he understands the fascination that they both continue to garner, and it makes him feel proud. Sir Robert was still married to his second wife when he met Maggie while working at the National Theatre in the mid-Sixties, and, after a torrid affair, they became man and wife in 1967, 10 days after the birth of their first son, Christopher.

Toby eschews the glamorous life that they lived, and one suspects there is a somewhat studious normality about his family life in north London. He says he seldom, if ever, goes to showbusiness parties. He has clearly learnt the lessons from his parents' stormy eight-year union: the rows, the ceaseless media attention and his father's drinking and philandering. Ten years ago, Stephens realised he had inherited his father's addiction to alcohol, and, as it was beginning to take its toll on his work on stage, he decided never to drink again. Sir Robert died at the age of 64 in 1995 after liver and kidney transplants, but would have been furious if anyone had ever suggested he was an alcoholic. "Of course he was an alcoholic in the same way that I am, in that he had no control over his drinking. If I were to have one drink now, I would want another and it would be agony if I couldn't. I simply decided to spare myself that by not allowing myself the first glass. People go on about me inheriting my father's demons and so on, but I think where the booze is concerned it is actually a boring biochemical thing that has been passed on to me.

"I associate my alcoholism with diabetes as both Robert and his sister had that disease. I have a friend who has been through the same thing. A lot of alcoholics who give up drinking then become addicted to cakes, chocolate, dessert. I really do believe it stems from the same imbalance within us." He reckons it's low self-esteem that gets a lot of people into acting, the chance to escape into other characters and the quick fix of applause, and that was almost certainly a factor in his father's addiction to sex. He has not, however, inherited his wandering eye. He was linked to one or two women in his younger days, including Alison Fogg, a language graduate to whom he was engaged, but he concedes his drinking wrecked their relationship. When in New York he was reunited with Anna-Louise at an audition – they had been at Lamda together – he was dry and therefore able to appreciate her. "We have had a settled relationship from the start. I like that as I like a settled family life now. I think I am more like my mother in that respect.

I have enough insecurity in my career – I never know what I will be doing next or how I will be – that I honestly don't need any more of it." Toby's mother and her second husband, the playwright Beverley Cross, gave him and Christopher (also an actor, with the stage name Chris Larkin) a tranquil upbringing in rural Sussex. He was educated at Aldro School and Seaford College before the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. It is Cross that Stephens calls his father rather than Sir Robert, whom he always refers to by his Christian name. "Dad was a calming influence on all of us. My mother found the break-up of her marriage to Robert very painful because she still loved him very much, but really his drinking and all the other issues had made her position untenable. God knows what kind of an upbringing I would have had if my mother's relationship with Robert hadn't broken up when it did, but I think it was good for me and my brother that things worked out the way that they did." He clearly reveres his mother and says her acting continues to inspire him even if, at 74, she does complain to him that she is only ever asked to play "old boots".

Last year was difficult for them both with her breast-cancer scare. A tumour was removed, and she completed a course of chemotherapy. "It knocked her for six but she has overcome that, thank God, and she is now back on form. If I have strength, then I certainly got it from her. I think the grandchildren have given us a new bond: she sees me going through, with my wife, what she had to go through for me." Inevitably, he sometimes bumps into women that Sir Robert took to his bed – it is a long and rather illustrious list that includes, among others, Vanessa Redgrave and Lady Antonia Fraser. But Stephens is not judgmental. Lady Antonia he sees quite often, because she moves in similar circles to him. "I like her, very much. I think it would be quite wrong to let my opinion of her be informed by what has happened in the past. People's lives are very complicated and always changing. Robert was not exactly an innocent party in that situation, in any case." He adds that his mother is "very good friends" with Sir Robert's second wife, Tarn, and that he is very close to his half-sister Lucy and her husband Mark.

"It's funny to think of all these disparate people that Robert has brought together – I think it's rather a wonderful legacy, in a way." Tim Walker is the theatre critic of 'The Sunday Telegraph' 'A Doll's House' is on until July 18. To book tickets, visit Toby Stephens - Biography - IMDb Toby Stephens Jump to: Overview (2) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (21) | Personal Quotes (16) Overview (2) 5' 11" (1.8 m) Mini Bio (1) Toby Stephens began his acting career while a stagehand at the Chichester Festival Theatre, in end-of-season productions mounted by the crew. In his brief professional career, he has already won the Sir John Gielgud Prize for Best Actor and the Ian Charleson Award for his performance in the title role of "Coriolanus" at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1994. His other work at the RSC includes "Measure for Measure", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Antony and Cleopatra", "Wallenstein", "All's Well That Ends Well" and "Unfinished Business".

Stephens also starred in Peter Hall 's production of "Tartuffe" at the Aldwych Theatre and has just finished filming The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996). His television appearances include A View from the Bridge (2012) and The Camomile Lawn (1992). He made his screen debut in Sally Potter 's Orlando (1992). - IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous Spouse (1) ( 15 September 2001 - present) (3 children) Trivia (21) Younger brother of Chris Larkin . Attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1999, appeared on Broadway in "Ring Round the Moon". Has the uncanny ability to master the American accent which, along with his smile and look, helped set him apart from the other actors reading for the part of Jay Gatsby and ultimately helped him land the role (a role he said he had the most fun playing and would do the part again in a heartbeat). Was considered for the role of "Robin" in Batman Forever (1995). Has turned down Hollywood many times; he concentrates mainly on theater.

After his parents' divorce when he was four years old, Stephens and his brother (actor Chris Larkin ) grew up traveling back and forth across the Atlantic with their mother for her numerous acting engagements. Older stepbrother of Quinn Hawkins . Father to Eli Alistair (b. May 2007), Tallulah (b. May 2009) and Kura (b. September 2010), with wife Anna-Louise Plowman . His family has been involved in three of Britain's most successful literary and film franchises. Toby played a James Bond villain in Die Another Day (2002), and later went on to play Bond himself on the radio. His father, Robert Stephens , played Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings on the radio. His mother, Maggie Smith , plays Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films. He and his mother, Maggie Smith , have both worked with Ian McKellen . Smith appeared with him in Richard III (1995), while Stephens worked with him in a BBC Radio adaptation of "Goldfinger". McKellen also played "Smith" when he hosted Saturday Night Live (1975).

In addition, both McKellen and Robert Stephens have appeared in adaptations of "The Lord of the Rings". In 1992, he and Tara Fitzgerald co-starred in the television miniseries "The Camomile Lawn." In 1996, they again co-starred in the adaptation of Anne Brontë 's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1996). Both appeared again in Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre (2006), but did not share screen time. Performing in Harold Pinter 's play "Betrayal" at the Donmar Warehouse, London as the character of "Jerry". [June 2007] Playing "Horner" in William Wycherley 's "The Country Wife" at Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. [October 2007] Soon to play "Georges Danton" in Georg Buchner 's "Danton's Death" at the National Theatre, London.

[2010] Plays in 'Henrik Ibsen''s "Doll's House" in Donmar Warehouse Theatre until 18th July 2009 alongside 'Gillian Anderson', Tara Fitzgerald and Christopher Eccleston . [June 2009] Performing as "Hamlet" in William Shakespeare 's "Hamlet" with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford upon Avon. [July 2004] Playing "Henry" in Tom Stoppard 's "The Real Thing" at The Old Vic, London. [April 2010] Was delivered via Caesarean section due to being in the breech position. Personal Quotes (16) Some men are into Hollywood glamor stuff and some are not. I've learnt an enormous amount from my children. Mostly that my agenda isn't the most important thing in the world. For a while, I was trying to squeeze them into my life. And it was such torment! It makes you realize how selfish you are. Growing up, I went to many schools, and I had to fit in to many different types of environments with totally different social groups. It helps me out as I move from job to job.

That's the privilege of being a grandparent - they can indulge the children while parents have to be the bad guy. Grandparents can also be subversive and naughty with them. My parents' parents were regular working-class people. I ended up speaking in a certain way, and one gets sidelined into doing certain parts. I think that is really quite narrow-minded. I'm fair-skinned, so beaches are a bit boring for me. I'm either smeared in lotion or under a shade. However, I do love the sea - diving, swimming and snorkeling. I blub all the time, in the most weird situations - not in the ones that should make me cry. Music makes me very emotional. I love Scotland, mainly for its landscape. I like walking, and it's a great place to go hiking. Screen is satisfying because it's so technical and mysterious. It's like playing roulette: you get a script, you think it's either great or naff, but you have no idea how it will really turn out. On stage, you are your own editor - and you get brief moments of grace, where suddenly you feel free. I think all parts come with baggage unless it is a brand new play.

If one was daunted by that, you would never do anything. If I was to meet Lou Reed or Bob Dylan , I would be totally helpless. Writers and musicians make me feel completely starstruck. I love traveling with my laptop because I get a bit nervous if I can't access my e-mails. Actors don't listen to each other. You're so obsessed with what you're saying or doing that the other person could be talking in Swahili and you wouldn't know. I would love to be in a Jimmy McGovern drama on TV, but there is no way he would ever ask me unless it would be to play a lawyer or something. I am a Londoner and I love my home. There are many things about this country which drive me crazy, but when I am in America, I feel wrong there. The Humpback Trail on New Zealand's South Island is really beautiful. It is a 70 km walk over about four days and is fairly arduous. You go through prehistoric forest and up to the top of Humpback Mountain, where there are amazing views down to the Tasman Sea.

See also Mark Lawson talks to actor Toby Stephens about his return to the stage | Film | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Two speeches in Harold Pinter's Betrayal have particular significance for Toby Stephens, who plays the adulterous literary agent Jerry in a revival of the 1978 drama in which a triangular relationship is played backwards from bitter break-up to ecstatic meeting. One, in a discussion between fathers, suggests that "boy babies cry more than girl babies". The night before we meet, Stephens's own first boy baby, Eli, had been born to his wife, the actress Anna-Louise Plowman. Pinter is right about the crying, he reports. It had been a long night: after Eli's birth, Stephens's mother, Maggie Smith, came round to celebrate after her performance in Edward Albee's The Lady of Dubuque. But other lines in the play will carry a more painful personal resonance, for both Stephens and Smith. At one point, Jerry has a drunken lunch with his publisher friend Robert, to be played in the new Donmar Warehouse production by Samuel West. As Jerry knocks back whisky, he explains that he's recovering from a virus.

"And the only thing to get rid of this bug was Scotch - at lunchtime as well as night. So I'm still drinking Scotch at lunchtime in case it comes back." Comic self-delusion over alcohol consumption - especially in conversation with someone called Robert - must inevitably conjure up ghosts for the son of Robert Stephens, a striking stage actor who dissipated his talent through the drink addiction that killed him. But for Toby - who, at 38, presents the startling collage of Maggie Smith's face on Robert Stephens's body - the boozy lunches in Betrayal will be a double double-take. I ask him whether, as well as inheriting his parent's looks and talents, he fears the presence of his father's self-destructive genes. He sighs, pauses and false-starts twice before answering: "I think I've dealt with it. It's one of those things. I had his alcoholism. I have it. Luckily, I got out of it by the time I was 30. I'd watched Robert die from it but, stupidly, carried on drinking. I wish I could say it was some kind of psychological torture. But it's purely a physical need.

I am designed to cope with huge quantities of alcohol and to want more. As soon as I have some, I want more. And my life is just much easier not having any, although I miss it sometimes." The crisis came around the turn of the millennium. His distress at the death of his stepfather - the writer Beverley Cross, who Smith had married after divorce from Robert Stephens - triggered a long period of 24-hour benders. Although outwardly a successful actor - in The Camomile Lawn on television and A Streetcar Named Desire on stage - he was beginning to forget lines and, bloated by litres of sugary liquids, led the New York Times reviewer of a New York production of Phedre to write: "The Hippolytus needs to get on a Stairmaster." While in Manhattan, Stephens turned up to audition for a revival of Anouilh's Ring Around the Moon, having spent the night in bars. He was so pissed he couldn't focus on the script but luckily a sympathetic director suggested he reschedule. Temporarily sober, he got the role, but realised he was going to "crash and burn" if this went on.

On the plane going to rehearsals, he bought the habitual bottle of vodka but placed it unopened in the fridge of his Manhattan lodgings and pledged not to drink for a month. After two sick, sweaty weeks, in which he "fooled myself that I had flu", he was shocked to find how well he felt. In this period, he met Anna-Louise and has not drunk since. His most high-profile roles - Hamlet for the RSC, the baddie Gustave Graves in the Bond film Die Another Day - have come in the dry years. Stephens's experience has left him intolerant of the acting profession's easy acceptance of drinking. "This whole romantic myth of Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton gliding through Hamlet on two bottles of vodka. I'm sorry, but it doesn't work. How fucking marvellous would they have been without it?" Had his mother said anything during his years of self-destruction? "I think she may have guessed. She'd been through it all with Robert. I've talked to her about it since and she's been incredibly supportive." Smith, though, has a reputation for quick but cruel humour, claiming whole pages in dictionaries of theatrical quotations.

When Toby appeared naked in Coriolanus, for example, Smith almost stole the show by commenting loudly in the interval that she hadn't seen his willy since he was five. Was her mothering as verbally colourful? "She can be tricky," he admits. "She's a very bright, very strong person. By and large, she gets away with it in the profession, because people know she's as hard on herself as anyone else. If she didn't deliver, people would be like, 'Do you mind?' But she can be ... I grew up around it. It's incredibly entertaining and sometimes quite nasty to be on the end of it. You just have to appreciate the wit behind it. I remember when she started to do it with my wife and my wife said, 'She was really rude to me.' And I said, 'Welcome to the family, you've been embraced into the bosom.'" Children like the people in their lives to retain constant personalities. So was it difficult being the offspring of actors, whose job is shifting shape on stage? "I find it easier now," says Stephens. "I'm as objective as I'll ever be and can appreciate what mum is doing.

I can look with technical admiration at how she does something, like going from a big laugh to deep pain in a moment. But, when I was young, it was embarrassing, to be honest. She'd walk on and I'd be like, 'Oh God, what's she doing? Why's she dressed like that? And, oh God, she's got to kiss that man.' I mean, I remember going to see Oedipus. And that completely fucked my head up." Given parents and a stepfather who were all involved in theatre, Stephens's profession might seem inevitable. But he remembers that the keys to the family business were not handed over easily: "They tried quite hard to make sure it was what I wanted to do. It wasn't, 'Oh great, he's going into the biz as well.' It was more, 'If this really is what you want to do, why? How many plays have you actually seen?" Betrayal is a play that Stephens has never seen, although he read it at drama school.

It was first staged in 1978, with the original script dating the scenes between 1977 and 1968, and Roger Michell's revival will obey this time-scale. Certain details - a speech about adulterers nipping out to pay-phones, a man boasting about slapping a woman - are so alien to modern culture that, says Stephens, "it can only be played as a period piece, although it won't be a total design thing, with everyone in flares." One aspect of the script, however, may be changed: the carefully specified pauses, which Pinter has come to regret making his trademark: "We had lunch with him before rehearsals and he came to hear an early readthrough. I said: 'Do you want me to adhere to dot dot dot and so on?' And he said: 'Ignore all that, whenever I do my plays, I ignore all that.' The pauses are there really as hints or advice for actors. And some of the pauses really work, it's orchestrated like music. But others you find in the playing you don't need." Three years have elapsed between his Hamlet and this play.

There have been films and a Rochester in BBC1's Jane Eyre and a long sabbatical in New Zealand, which, I suggest, indicates some pickiness or disillusionment with the business. "Yeah. The longer I'm in this job, the more I realise how lucky I am because it's getting harder. It just seems to be diminishing. There seem to be no films at all and, in theatre, it's harder and harder to get audiences in." Some of the audiences coming to the Donmar will be drawn from the millions who saw Die Another Day. Before Daniel Craig was given the cinematic licence to kill, Stephens was listed in some newspapers as a possible Bond; he would have become the first actor to have played both 007 and a villain in the series. "I don't know where that came from," he laughs. "I mean, Christ, there was enough fuss about [Craig] being blond. Can you imagine if they'd given it to a ginger? There'd be assassination plots." · Betrayal is in preview at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2, and opens on June 5.

Toby Stephens interview: 'Downton wouldn't be right for me' - Telegraph Film Toby Stephens interview: 'Downton wouldn't be right for me' Toby Stephens, the actor son of Dame Maggie Smith and Sir Robert Stephens, on alcoholism, piracy, and the trouble with famous parents 'Deadwood meets The Wire': Toby Stephens stars as Captain Flint in Black Sails Photo: Starz Follow Toby Stephens's ginger beard sparkles in the Californian sunlight. His Titian hair is longish and glossy, and - in his simple black T-shirt and jeans - he appears slim but not slight. We're sitting having breakfast among movie moguls and other assorted power-brokers on a Hollywood hotel patio, and Stephens has more charisma in a single freckle than all of them combined. It's been said he has the physiognomy of his father Sir Robert Stephens and the eyes of his mother Dame Maggie Smith . They are pale, penetrating and icy blue. But there's an ease and warmth that flows from him.

Stephens is currently appearing in the lead role of a big-budget TV series, Black Sails, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay for US channel Starz; in an unprecedented move it was commissioned for a second series before an episode had been aired. He's also in The Machine, a mesmerising and heartbreaking grown-up British sci-fi film that has been described as "Blade Runner on a budget". He plays a single-minded scientist whose life goes awry when he meets a brilliant woman who has made an android that appears to have emotions. To say what happens next would be giving the story away, but there are echoes of Frankenstein and Metropolis. Stephens is doing well; arguably better than he's ever done. Far from bringing him privilege, his famous heritage seems to have brought more complications and closed as many doors as it has opened. He says it has taken him until now, at 44, to feel he knows who he is and be comfortable in his own skin. Yet there's an insecurity that lurks. "I'm a pessimist, so I'm never going to be disappointed," he says.

As an actor he has received rave reviews, notably in 2006 when he was a brilliant, brooding Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre. You felt that was when his career was going to take off - more starring roles across stage, screen andTV. But it didn't really happen. He shrugs: "Things can go wrong." Related Articles Dame Maggie Smith: I've never watched Downton Abbey 15 Feb 2013 He did get to play a Bond villain in Die Another Day (2002), but he later described the film - in which his character was revealed to be a genetically modified North Korean - as "the apotheosis of ridiculousness". For a long time, he says, he suffered from feeling he could only play cad, bounder, bad boy or posh bloke. "And sometimes you get a script and you think, 'Oh, that's a good script', and it comes out rubbish. The other thing which I've also experienced is you have three children and a mortgage and you go 'I've got to work' and you do whatever comes along to pay the bills.

You can't polish a turd you know." 'You do whatever comes along to pay the bills': Toby Stephens (Hugo Glendinning) He is married to the New Zealand-born actress Anna-Louise Plowman and they have three children (Eli, six, Tallulah, four, and Kura, three). Stephens knew Anna-Louise at drama school, but they didn't get together until they met for an audition for voice-over work in New York. "They weren't sure if they wanted a woman's voice or a man's voice and I said if I get it I'll take you out for dinner, if you get it you can take me out. I got it and I took her out and that was that." Last year he starred in a hugely successful run of Noël Coward's Private Lives at the Gielgud Theatre, in London. His parents performed in that same play, as did Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. "That play is really about people who chime together," he tells me. A few years ago the director, his good friend Jonathan Kent, wanted him to star in it with Cate Blanchett .They met when Blanchett was feeling unwell.

"There was absolutely no chemistry at all. Nothing against her but it just wasn't going to happen. When I met with Anna Chancellor I knew she was a kindred spirit. We got one another." But one play was all he could manage last year because of the huge demand of Black Sails and The Machine. Stephens calls the former, "Deadwood meets The Wire. It's not just the blood and boobs it's billed as. It's more about the mechanism of piracy rather than the fantasy of it.Whatever we've seen before has been a mythologised version and what was really good was we got halfway through filming season one and it got such a great reaction at Comic-Con it got recommissioned. Which is just as well as they've built three full-sized ships, a water tank and a shanty town on the coast of Cape Town." Black Sails is a prequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, and Stephens plays Captain Flint, the pirate who buried the eponymous treasure. He is "the most feared pirate," says Stephens. "A brilliant man who amassed a huge amount of treasure, but when we meet him he is on the ropes financially and his crew are very disgruntled.

He has the capacity for incredible violence and anger, but if you were a pirate you had to be feared otherwise it wouldn't work." The shoot was six months in South Africa, a long time to be away from his family. "It was tough, there's no dodging it. But at the same time it was such a unique job and a great opportunity. There is a point where FaceTime becomes not enough and there are only so many conversations you can have with your kids pulling faces at themselves." 'Blade Runner on a budget': Toby Stephens in The Machine Did he intend to have children in such quick succession? "No, it just happened that way. If we'd planned better there would have been more time in between them. Hard, but great fun. Anna-Louise works and that was always very much understood. I want her to have a career. I want to be able to share responsibilities for the children. In this world women need to work, they need to keep their minds." He got called to audition for Black Sails while he was in the middle of making The Machine. "We had no budget, we were working horrendous days and I was in every scene.

I said, 'There's no way I'm going to have time to put myself on tape for this. I'm not interested in a pirate show.' My agent was saying, 'No, it's not a normal pirate show, it's brilliant.' Anyway, she wore me down and then it was agony, the agony actors have when they fall in love with a character and you think, 'S---, this is cool, I'm probably not going to get this,' and this was one of the few times I actually did." It is blisteringly hot on the terrace, thanks to a fierce patio heater. Neither of us think to turn it down because we assume it can only be on full-blast or completely dead.This, it transpires, is an apt metaphor for Stephens himself. He has a moon tattoo on his arm. It's a naively drawn little moon and the subject of some regret. "I was in my twenties and I got very drunk," he says. "I don't remember much about it but I remember waking up and thinking what the f---have you done? I remember it was a guy on the Portobello Road who was covered in tattoos and wore a balaclava.

I wish I'd chosen something that was a bit more baroque, but it was a drunken decision and I haven't had a drink for 13 years now." He says this matter-of-factly rather than evangelically. He never went to Alcoholics Anonymous. Removing alcohol from his life is something he did entirely on his own. I ask him about a story I've read concerning the actress Diana Rigg. He and Rigg were doing a play together and he was so drunk he fell asleep in his dressing room, leaving his costar waiting for him on stage. It was a matinee of Racine's Britannicus. "She did forgive me, begrudgingly," he grins. "It wasn't easy. I thought she'd be more sympathetic." Kindred spirits: Stephens with Anna Chancellor in Private Lives (Alastair Muir) That was not the turning point. There are a number of other pivotal moments. "I think it's one of those things that builds over a period of time and I hit the point where it was the right time for me to stop. I have a switch, it's off or on. I don't have anything in between. There are lots of people who say go on, you can have just one.

No I can't, it's either on or off. "There was a moment of clarity where I got a theatre job in NewYork. They put me in a nice apartment. I bought this bottle of vodka on the plane coming over. I remember looking out of the window at New York and going 'I am going to f---this up so badly if I carry on the way I am. I am going to stop for two weeks and get myself together.' I went through two weeks of not drinking, which was not easy. It was then I realised how sick I was. Nights where I normally drank I couldn't sleep, I was too wired and felt awful. "But after two weeks I felt so good that I didn't want to go back to the life I was living. I remember reading a book and going to sleep and how nice that had been. I remember thinking, 'When I wake up tomorrow I am not going to feel like s---,' and that was when the switch went: 'My life is better like this'. Now I don't even think of it.

I used to get a waft of wine and I'd think, 'Oh I'd really love a glass of wine,' but I don't even get that any more." Why didn't he go to AA? "I think AA is good for people if they want it but I think there is an addiction to talking about your addiction." Stephens is not a luvvie type who enjoys the catharsis of confession and he doesn't like talking about his parents' complicated lives. And he especially dislikes the shadow they cast over him. Growing up he barely knew his father. His parents divorced when he was four and he and his brother lived with his mother who soon after married playwright Beverley Cross. Much of his childhood was spent in Canada where Dame Maggie was acting. Despite this, genetics have left their mark. Maggie Smith and Robert Stephens, with their sons Toby and Christopher, in 1972 (REX) "He's definitely in there, Robert," he sighs. He called his stepfather dad and his biological father Robert. He finally got to know him as an adult when they were both working for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

"It was good meeting him when I did and getting to know him because then I didn't have this baggage of being angry with him. I had a fantastic stepfather so I didn't resent him in any way, although I was unnerved by him. He was not an easy man although he was incredibly charming, gregarious and fun. "He was diagnosed with something that at the time they called hyper mania which is now called bipolar. People have euphoric phases and massive crashes. It's a form of depression. He used to suffer from this quite badly. When I found this out it changed my view of him because, prior to that, I'd thought of him as just a boozer and a womaniser and then suddenly I realised he just wasn't in control; it was a chemical in his body. "I got to know him when he was having a renaissance at the RSC with King Lear and I was doing Coriolanus at the same time. I feel he was conflicted. "He was proud of me and at the same time incredibly frustrated it wasn't him, so it was odd. Then I saw him get very, very ill with alcohol.

That was hard on everyone, not just me." Robert Stephens developed gall bladder cancer and was treated with radiotherapy, which killed the new kidney they had given him. After a "long, demeaning illness", he died in 1995. "And it was all self-inflicted," says his son. "All those years of abuse. You have done this to yourself." That should make anyone give up drink. "Exactly. That was one of those things where you see how destructive it is. It's not just affecting one person, it's affecting everyone around them. It took me a while to figure it out, for it to percolate through my consciousness before I made my decision. I had flirted with sobriety. I had stopped for a year while he was ill to say to him, 'Look if I can do this you can do this.' It didn't work. He was still drinking and smoking. When he died I went, 'Oh f---it, I'm going to drink again.'" It was a temporary relapse and a tough time in his life. His stepfather, Cross, also died around the same time. "He was a lovely man, very stable. He really looked after my mum and was just great.

My mother and him had been lovers before she metmy father. My parents split when I was four. My mother just went, quite rightly so, I've got two children that I'm responsible for and your life is in total chaos and our life is in total chaos." He and his mother are extremely close. What they went through together bonded them. (Charmingly, when Stephens disrobed on stage for Coriolanus, his mother was reportedly heard during the interval exclaiming that she hadn't seen him naked since he was five.) He says if he gets any time off after Black Sails this year he won't do another play, although perhaps he'll direct a short film he's written. It is an area he would like to pursue. "I'm going to see what happens. I want to settle myself at the moment and I'm quite happy to just be with my family." So the rumour that he was going to make an appearance in Downton Abbey to star with his mother isn't true? His pale face suddenly looks even whiter. READ: Maggie Smith: Hollywood treats us like 5-year-olds "No. Downton has an amazing following but it wouldn't be right for me.

On the whole I don't watch television. I've seen a couple of episodes of it, but not deliberately. When you have kids you don't really watchTVany more and when I do I binge-watch box sets of Breaking Bad." I tell him how much I enjoyed his mother's scenes with Shirley MacLaine . "I didn't see them, sadly," he replies. "I would like to work with my mum but it would have to be something else. It would perhaps be one scene. And also it's not that I'm running away from it, but at this stage I want people to know me. I don't like what happens when you get mulched together." I tell him a friend of mine with famous parents once said: "Having famous parents is like communism. Sounds a great idea but it never works." "Exactly, and I've struggled with that for a lot of my life, so I try to go, 'This is my mum, this is me.' We are on totally separate paths and we are separate entities. We are not from some acting dynasty or anything. I don't want a dynasty.

It just so happens that I'm an actor." He tells me that one of the producers of Black Sails got chatting one night and asked him about his childhood and why he was in Canada. "He said, 'Your mum was an actress? Who?' And when I told him he said, 'You're f------ joking. That's surreal.' And I thought that was great. What's nice for me is that she is in my genetic make-up. I embrace that, I love that. But that's just part of me." The Machine is in cinemas and on VoD on March 21 and on DVD on March 31; themachinemovie.com ; Private Lives will be screened in UK cinemas on February 6. See cinemalive.com Toby Stephens - TV.com Toby Stephens EDIT Toby is the son of Robert Stephens and Dame Maggie Smith, both actors. His parents divorced when he was only four years old. After that, he and his brother, actor Chris Larkin, grew up travelling across the Atlantic with their mother for her acting career.

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Remember: Abuse of the TV.com image system may result in you being banned from uploading images or from the entire site – so, play nice and respect the rules! Choose background: Anna-Louise Plowman (Actress) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Anna-Louise Plowman. CHILDHOOD 1975 Birth Born in 1975. 1982 7 Years Old Plowman attended the Samuel Marsden Collegiate School, NZ between 1982 and 1989, where she graduated from Form 7. … Read More She later attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and the Lecoq School in Paris. Read Less TWENTIES 2001 26 Years Old Plowman married actor Toby Stephens in London, in 2001 and thus has actress Maggie Smith as her mother-in-law. … Read More In May 2007, Plowman and Stephens, had their first child, a son named Eli Alistair.

Simon Gray, the renowned British playwright (who penned Japes, a stage play, and Missing Dates, a radio drama, both of which starred Stephens), was reportedly Eli's godfather. The couple became parents of a second child, a girl named Tallulah, in May 2009. "Home and Dry". Their third child, a daughter named Kura was born in September 2010. Read Less 2003 28 Years Old … Anna-Louise Plowman (sometimes known as Anna-Louise Stephens) is an actress. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Consultant Anaesthetist Annalese Carson in Holby City and Dr. Sarah Gardner in Stargate SG-1 who was possessed by the Goa'uld Osiris. Read Less In 2003 she played Melinda Maclean, wife of British communist spy Donald Duart Maclean, and mistress of spy Kim Philby (played by husband Toby Stephens), in the TV mini-series Cambridge Spies. THIRTIES 2005 30 Years Old She played Diana Goddard in the Doctor Who story "Dalek" in 2005.

… Read More Plowman also played the role of "C" in a revival of Edward Albee's play, Three Tall Women, in 2006, at the Oxford Playhouse. Read Less Original Authors of this text are noted on . The London Magazine The London Magazine 27 November 2012| By Jasper Rees Toby Stephens The son of two famous actors, Toby Stephens has it in his DNA to be a performer. But, as Jasper Rees finds out, he’s very much his own man Email this It falls to all of us to escape the shadow cast by our parents. For some, however, the shadow is a little longer, such as actors who have followed a famous parent into the profession. Toby Stephens has gamely endured 20 years of comparisons times two. His father, the late Sir Robert Stephens, was a celebrated English theatre actor. His mother is Dame Maggie Smith, whose latest iconic role is, of course, as Downton Abbey’s acerbic Countess. “I was so naive when I first came into the profession that I didn’t think it would matter,” says Toby when we meet for coffee in Victoria. “And then you realise that you’ve got to deal with people’s expectations.

Human beings can be quite perverse. They want you to be terrible.” Stephens was never remotely terrible, but at 43 he is now quite a different actor from the young braggart who announced himself in a television drama of Mary Wesley’s The Camomile Lawn, as a buffoonish toff who spent his screen time either displaying his manhood – or talking about it. His first ten years mostly brought variations on youthful swagger: a strapping Coriolanus for the RSC, a smirking Bond villain in Die Another Day. Did he feel typecast? “I didn’t mind at the time. But film and TV people tend to go, ‘You do that kind of thing,’ and that’s where they want to keep you. After Bond, I felt, ‘I don’t want to do this any more because it uses about that much of my bandwidth,’” he says, holding a finger and thumb just slightly apart. The strawberry-blond mane is still a thing of manly splendour, but the range of characters you’ll see it on has expanded, thanks to Stephens’ success in varied, demanding theatre roles over the past decade.

He triumphed as Hamlet in the West End in 2004, starred opposite Gillian Anderson in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Donmar Warehouse in 2009, then took on something thoroughly contemporary, Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing at the Old Vic in 2010. The same year, he had the lead in French Revolution drama Danton’s Death at the National, and earlier this year he starred to critical acclaim in Coward’s Private Lives in Chichester. Stephens says the Donmar is his favourite London theatre, because of the unusually close proximity of the audience to the stage. “I love the fact that the audience feel that they are illicitly looking at something.” Born in London’s Chelsea in 1969, Stephens lived in Ontario, Canada from the age of four to eight, then West Sussex. He trained in the family business of drama at LAMDA, and by his early 20s had won the aforementioned role in The Camomile Lawn, and the part of Othello in the film of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Now he was a face in British drama in his own right.

From his parents, he inherited an enticing blend of gravel and fruitiness. During a spell living in New York, Stephens met his wife, the New Zealand actress Anna-Louise Plowman. In 2000 – the year that he starred as Gatsby in a TV movie of The Great Gatsby – the couple moved to London and set about hunting for a New York-style loft space. “Eventually we found one off Brick Lane. We walked up four flights to the top of this old furniture factory and I was going, ‘I hate this, it’s awful’ then walked into the space and thought, ‘This is amazing!’ And I love the area. It’s like New York, it’s alive.” Nearby coffee shops such as Allpress Espresso Roastery are a draw for Stephens, who forswore alcohol a few years back, hence “I don’t really do pubs any more.” You’ll find him dining in St John’s Bread and Wine on Commercial Street, because “the food is just fantastic, and it’s child-friendly”. The couple have a five-year-old son and two toddler daughters, and Victoria Park is another favourite spot. “We do wonderful parks in this city.

I judge every park now by their playgrounds.” Other than scoping out playgrounds, Stephens has plenty to keep him busy in 2013, including promoting The Machine, a sci-fi movie he has the lead in. There are no plans to slow down: “I’ve got three kids, I’ve got a mortgage, I need to pay the bills.” So would he ever do a cameo in Downton Abbey? “I’d rather not. I always find it slightly naff when it happens. ‘Hey, we’re an acting family, let’s do a show.’ I don’t want to feel like I’m part of some club.” With a lineage like his, Stephens is part of a club – but it’s on his own terms.

Question: Actor Toby Stephens is the son of which famous actress?
Answer: MAGGIE SMITH